Don't try this at home

I get a lot of traffic both here and on my website because of snakes. Its not really surprising I guess, they're fascinating, have captured the imagination of many.

I've had a lot of opportunity to work with them over the last 5 years(!). They're fun, scary and hard to photograph. All animals are camera shy, snakes seem to be particularly so...well ok maybe I just think so...

They're kind of difficult to really vary very much in terms of depiction. Sometimes theres a specific thing you're after and that works.

Other times the story has to built by the viewer. (How I wish the Russell's earth boa image had a person walking down that road in it ....how I wish. It would complete the story with less effort from the viewer....
Other times I just like patterns. Not everyone necessarily likes them or even gets the stupid visual puns involved. The Indian Cobra's latin name is Naja naja naja, pronounced with a j ...Na ja as two separate words in Hindi mean "don't go".... Now you get it ?

If you're really really lucky though you get to watch some truly amazing behaviour and then to photograph it up close. Like the Rat snakes in combat dance below. Its a long ritualised display for dominance between two male snakes, which occurs in the breeding months, the months at the end of winter approaching summer. This was in the days that I didnt have all the appropriate lenses...I took it with a 28-105, you can go ahead and try and guess how close they were to me....Not that i was afraid they were much too engrossed in themselves to worry about me. And anyway, all I could worry abt was the perfect shot. Don't you just love all that muscle and movement?

Anyway...parting shot... good night.!